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MANGAUNG: On organisational renewal, ANC talks the talk

MANGAUNG: On organisational renewal, ANC talks the talk

On Wednesday evening the ANC reported to the media on the outcome of its internal discussion on “strategy, tactics and organisational renewal". ANC members Febe Potgieter-Gqubule and David Makhura said the ANC conference had hosted 13 different commissions and each one had discussed aspects of the president’s political report and debated issues of organisational renewal. By KHADIJA PATEL/NewsFire.

Crucially, Makhura stressed that there will be nothing new regarding policy from this conference. Most of what will emanate from the conference will be a reaffirmation of the policy conference positions. “The national conference has embraced all proposals from policy conference,” Makhura said, “In spirit as well as detail.”

In keeping with the recommendations of the policy conference, Makhura said the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC would be instructed to establish an ethics committee within three months of the Mangaung conference. “This is going to be a very important organ of the ANC,” Makhura said. “In other parties this committee has played a very important role.” The inspiration for the committee is said to have come from the Chinese Communist Party.

The development of the ethics committee forms part of the party’s realisation of the need for it to adjust itself to the demands of changing times and the unmet demands of South African society. The ethics committee will comprise of ANC veterans who will respond to complaints and recommendations with ethical implications from inside and outside the party.

“One of the important functions of the ethics committee will be reviewing business interests of ANC members,” Makhura said. He stressed however that the ANC was “under no illusions” that even with the speedy establishment of an ethics committee, it would take time for the ANC to reach its objective of organisational rejuvenation. Makhura was still unrelenting on the urgency for a process of organisational rejuvenation to begin.

“It is urgent that we renew the ANC,” Makhura said.

He said that at the centre of organisational renewal was the ANC’s policy of “cadre deployment”. Makhura said the problem was not the policy itself but how it was implemented. The ANC believes the solution to what it believes to be the incorrect implementation of the policy is “careful, political training of ANC members”.  “There will be a lot of emphasis on the question of ethics, it is a central problem that we have acknowledged,” Makhura said.

What emerges then from the ANC conference is a party that realised the need for major structural change “for a party that befits a ruling party”. Makhura said, “Conference agreed that as things stand now, we are going to have to jack up our capacity because we are lagging behind.” DM

Read more:

  • ANC policy conference, day 3: No more ANC for sale in Daily Maverick.

Photo: Mangaung, Free State, South Africa, 19 December 2012. Febe Potgieter-Gqubule (centre) and David Makhura (left) report on the ANC national elective conference commissions on organisational renewal and strategy and tactics. ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu in the background. Photo Greg Nicolson/NewsFire

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